NIGERIA LABOUR CONGRESS HAS BECOME THE SHADOW OF ITS REAL IMAGE.............By Dotun George.

Sitting down and pondering all the day long about so many issues as regard this country, the life of average Nigerian, their suffering, predicament, slavery going on work place and exploitation Nigerians are subjected to by foreigners who are employers of labour.
One of my friends on social media who had gone through my tutelage as a students in the past called my attention to the same subject of exploitation of Nigerians both by Nigerian and foreign employers of labour sometimes ago. He narrated a very bleak, horrible, pathetic and unbecoming pictures that can make any sensible human being cry.

The experience of many Nigerian Workers are not different from what our ancestors experienced during slavery and colonialism. It is a sorry case, abuse of human right and derogation of human dignity for any one in this country to still be going through the kind of suffering Nigerians are still going through in workplace in 21st century.

As a researcher, I have to find out the mission of Nigeria Labour Congress, the largest and the umbrella body for all Nigerian workers. To my surprise, what I found out was not what Labour Congress was doing in reality.
The mission of the Nigeria Labour Congress is to organise, unionise and educate all categories of Nigerian workers; defend and advance the political, economic, social and cultural rights of Nigerian workers; emancipate and unite Nigerian workers and people from all forms of exploitation and discrimination; achieve gender justice in the work place and in NLC; strengthen and deepen the ties and connections between Nigerian workers and the mutual/natural allies in and outside Nigeria and; lead the struggle for the transformation of Nigeria into a just, humane and democratic society.
If truly Nigeria Labour Congress has the above mission in its constitution, it is high time this organized labour rise up and live up its mission and expectations of Nigerians and workers.

If one of the mission of NLC is to emancipate and unite Nigerian workers and people from all forms of exploitation and discrimination; achieve gender justice in the work place and in NLC; strengthen and deepen the ties and connections between Nigerian workers and the mutual/natural allies in and outside Nigeria and; lead the struggle for the transformation of Nigeria into a just, humane and democratic society. Then NLC need to do more by sending spies to most companies and industries and see for themselves the kind of working conditions workers are exposed and subjected to. It is alarming, appalling and pathetic.

The N18,000 minimum wage is five years old. In view of the fact that we have a five- yearly minimum wage review arrangement, we believe a new minimum wage is legally due. But more compelling than this is the fact that a combination of progressive inflation and the massive devaluation of the Naira have undermined every conceivable benefit of the N18,000.
Today most Nigerian workers don't earn up to N18,000 per month. Come to Ota and Agbara Industrial estates some are paid N200, N500, etc per day. After working for 30 days, to collect their wages is another difficult venture. Most of these companies won't pay until the first and second week of a new month. Can someone tell me if any one can survive with is kind of pay and working conditions.

Labour Union is asking for more money, N56,000 by one faction of NLC and N96,000 by another faction of the same once upon a time, most vibrant and biggest Union in Nigeria is unrealistic and unhealthy for the economic situation of Nigeria currently. For me that is a misplaced priority, if that that amount is paid today, the value will still be diminished and will not lift the flight of workers. Labour Union should stop making unrealistic demands and face the reality of the moment.

What Labour Union need to canvas for is stronger naira against dollar, more efficient and high productive country. Collaborating with government to end unemployment and creating enabling environment. Labour need to use all the apparatus at their to address so many critical issue affecting the country. They need to engage the criminal elements and busybodies in the National Assembly, especially the senate.
NLC need to engage the the indigenous companies and multinational to stop Nigerian workers being used as casual workers and contract staff.

Common sense tutorial should be coming from labour Union, instead of allowing the busybody and twitter senator with corrupted sense embarrassing the nation with his useless propaganda.

Labour need to wake up and fight for better welfare for workers and not this unrealistic demands NLC is putting on the table now, join government in fight corruption to standstill. Motor park touts are becoming a torn in the flesh of the drivers and this Labour Union did not blink over this and do not bother to ensure workers have a better conditions to work with.
Emancipation of Nigerian workers and people from all forms of exploitation and discrimination, achievement of gender justice in the work place should be brought to table of urgent discussion and in NLC; they need to right away, instead of going on useless and unnecessary strike over minimum wage alone, they should lead the struggle for the transformation of Nigeria into a just, humane and democratic society.
It was also noted particularly that payment of pensions at workplace is another challenge the labour Union must look into.
Salaries and pensions are inalienable rights of workers and retirees and not privileges. Workers must not be denied of this privileges.

REST IN PEACE, FOR WHO? By Dotun George

The guy was not in peace at the critical stage of his life, he did not have peace of mind, he did not have peace at home, he ran abroad and peace also eluded him over there. In the midst of his confusion and dilemmas, he ran back home, yet peace disappeared from the radar and his antenna could not pick the frequency of peace because many people who should have enjoyed peace when he was the custodian of the Commonwealth of his people did not enjoy a peaceable and beneficial life, rather they were impoverished more, subjugated, abused, molested, and their lives were not better off than the animals.

You did not give peace when destiny beckon on you to the needful but rather, you make life difficult for those who are suppose to see light and beckon of hope by your service. Where will peace come for such fellow?

When his life begins to crash before him, the search for peace, serenity and sound health became futile and mirage. He had the money, he was surrounded by men of great calibre and to the extent his traditional ruler called him God. Unfortunately for this man, peace keep eluding him and became his adversary.

The man met his waterloo and vanished like a vapour and ignorantly those who don't known the true meaning of peace are wishing the man who died without having and enjoying peace to have and rest in peace in his grave. Is that not waste of time and exercise in futility?

Tell a dead man to rest in peace, prayer all the prayer in this world for the dead man, it does not change anything and it is not going to change anything. The moment an individual breathe his last breath and begin his journey to the land beyond, there is no amount of rest in peace that will guarantee him peace if he had not found peace with God while he is still alive.

Peace is the heritage of the righteous, the upright and men who do the biding of God  and not those who make life and the world worst than they met it.
Tell a righteous man that it will be well with him and what will you tell a man whose life is like a curse to humanity?

A life live for self, life without purpose, a life that add no value to anyone, a life meaningless, a life that is not rooted in God and life that benefited no one can't be peaceful here and thereafter. It is only the righteous and men who pursue peace with all men will have peace here and in the land beyond.

THE BEAUTY OF LIFE......... By Dotun George

I read a very fascinating story few days back and I have not recovered from the impact and lessons of the story.

On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced the birth of his baby daughter, and a new investment for the future.
The newest Zuckerberg was welcomed in true Facebook fashion: in a Note .

Zuckerberg wrote a letter to his just-born daughter, Max, saying that her birth had sparked an even greater interest in the future for the Facebook CEO and his wife, Priscilla Chan. “Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today,” wrote Zuckerberg, reflecting on the world today and in the future. “While headlines often focus on what's wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting.” Zuckerberg promised his little girl that he would do his best to continue to improve the world and said that “society has an obligation to invest now to improve the lives of all those coming into this world, not just those already here.”
While this letter is heartfelt and sincere (as all parents want to do what they can to improve the lives of their children) it served another purpose as well. “As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation,” wrote
Zuckerberg. “We will give 99% of our Facebook shares – currently about $45 billion – during our lives to advance this mission.” An SEC filing released shortly after the letter’s publication revealed that the Facebook CEO “plans to sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years.”

The Western world and few of others across the globe understand the importance of investment in humanity and making life better than they met than many of us in Africa, Nigeria especially.

Our rich and wealthy men and women don't care about anybody apart from themselves and their immediate family. We missed so many great opportunities by our failure to live above self and think trans generationally.

The beauty of life is not in the abundance of money and wealth accumulated or stolen but it lies in the abundance of people we help to develop, survive, grow and put smile on their face.

What we do for ourselves died within us, what we do for others lives forever. The worthiness of life lies in what we do for humanity.

To live in the consciousness of the people is to live forever.

RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCE ONE SURE WAY TO END POWER PROBLEM...... By Dotun George

The Energy Institute has stressed the need for the Federal Government to increase the use of renewable energy sources in its energy mix in a bid to improving power supply in the country.

“We have no choice. What we have to do as a country is what every other country is doing; we need the mix of all energy types; you need coal, gas, renewable including solar..

“We need all because the fact is that you cannot use one to reach everybody; there is no reason why the whole of the northern Nigeria should not be bubbling with solar energy.
“For example, we don’t need to start sending gas to the North but we have not thought about all these and that is why we are where we are now. However, there is even a global initiative that even compels Nigeria to also be looking in that direction; so all those agreements, which we have signed on are going to be monitored from now on forward; so, we really don’t have a choice.”.......... ...The Chairman, Energy Institute, Mr. Osten Olorunsola,

My Take......
Nigeria cannot afford to remain and live perpetually in the past while the other parts of the world are taken giant stride and quantum leap.

The outdated hydroelectric power generation that we bank on in this nation has not avail in anyway and it is not going to avail us much because there are better, sustainable and adaptable sources and power generation.
Renewable energy is generally defined as energy that is collected from resources which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind , rain, tides, waves , and geothermal heat.

Renewable energy often provides energy in four important areas: electricity generation , air and water heating/cooling, transportation, and rural (off-grid) energy services.

Renewable energy resources exist over wide geographical areas, in contrast to other energy sources, which are concentrated in a limited number of countries. Rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency is resulting in significant energy security , climate change mitigation , and economic benefits.  The results of a recent review of the literature concluded that as greenhouse gas(GHG) emitters begin to be held liable for damages resulting from GHG emissions resulting in climate change, a high value for liability mitigation would provide powerful incentives for deployment of renewable energy technologies. In international public opinion surveys there is strong support for promoting renewable sources such as solar power and wind power.

If Nigeria as a country is going to experience change, power stability and sustainable power generation, we must begin to look at renewable power generation sources. Rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency is resulting in significant energy security , climate change mitigation , and economic benefits. And we as a country will be on a disadvantage position if we don't harness and deploy this trend of renewable energy.

It is high time the government of our country begin to think outside of the box and do the needful as regard power generation. Instability in power supply is one of the bane of our national development.

REVISITING EDUCATION AND CHANGE THE CAUSE OF OUR COUNTY.......... By Dotun George

Let me begin my discussion by asking what are the building blocks of development required for countries to attain the status reached by developed nations.  Education, to me,  is the matrix of development. From either infrastructure or agriculture, the influential factor of education cannot be controverted. The question is:  why is it that the most developed of economies are the most developed in education? And, why do the most underdeveloped of economies have underdeveloped education? These are not conundrums after all, as the answers to these questions are not far-fetched. One of the answers is in the fact that the place of education in the growth of the development of any nation  is paramount.

Any nation failing in education is on the cusp of failure. Why? It is so because nations need educated citizens to formulate government policies. Without education, how can economic problems like inflation and devaluation of currency be addressed? Or, how will nations tackle unemployment? Developing nations,  as we know, are plagued with these problems. This emphasises the need for human development in these countries.

There are countries with high rate of maternal and child mortalities. HIV/AIDS and other life- threatening diseases are also pandemic in these countries, simply because they lack sufficient health workers. Citizens of ailing economies sometimes go for “medical tourism” to developed countries which offer better health care services though at pricey costs.
Needless to say that when we say that a country is developing, it does not mean it isn’t endowed with natural resources.

Africa as we know, is still in the backwaters but paradoxically, has numerous resources to boast of. The continent provides approximately 98% of diamond needs in the world. Also, Africa has some of the largest deposits of tin, uranium, coal, and so on. Therefore what is wrong? This is where education comes in for capacity building and human resource development. These are sine qua non to the development of an economy.
But, what is the condition of our institutions like? How capable are our pedagogues? How relevant are our curricula? How much is voted for education?

Education goes beyond what is acquired within the walls of a school going by the etymological root of the word education which is educare and it means “to bring up”. So, education, in fact, is any system that’s concerned with unearthing the latent skills of a child, and it is a truth that it isn’t only our – decrepit – schools that can do that. In fact, what our schools do more often than not is to kill those talents in our children by omission or commission.

The idea of education becomes so affiliated to schooling during the epoch of industrialism in Europe and this insidiously made non-formal education a second fiddle to it. But the truth is that non-formal education caters for over 55% education while its formal counterpart only caters for 22-25%. How mistaken our priorities are.

Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday, Churchill Winston and Abraham Lincoln are examples of people who demonstrated great erudition in their capacities but they didn’t have much of formal education due to poor backgrounds. It was even worse for Lincoln who was said to have attended school only for one year! Dickens and Lincoln were autodidacts whose accomplishments live on. American history is incomplete without a mention of Lincoln’s 13th amendment and so is a list of literary magnum opuses incomplete without Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

Nigerians  have a lot of potentials,  but the craze for certificates is really hampering the realisation of these potentials. Schooling is great but the government’s insouciant attitude towards it has hampered the fructification of its purpose in the life of many  graduates, which has ultimately placed them in the paradox of  being schooled but not educated. I’m not advocating a recycling of our educational policy. We have done that far too often since 1977 when the first one was drafted. Instead, we need to fashion out an educational policy aimed at Nigeria’s development. We tout our MDGs, but do we ever pause to ask if they are achievable going by the grim state of our education?

Government needs to build more schools and vocational centers, spruce up existing ones, allocate more funds to education, train and retrain teachers and do lots of things. We need to realise though that the task of rejigging education – formal and non-formal – is a communal duty. We are all stakeholders.

THE REALITY OF REALITIES. – By Dotun George

What is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: The lives of average Nigerians are miserable, labourious and short. People are born; they are given just as much food as will keep the breath in their bodies. Most people in Nigeria do not know the meaning of happiness and leisure. Freedom and comfortable life become elusive.
The life of average Nigerians is misery and slavery and it looks as if nature has created man to suffer. The soil of Nigeria is fertile and the ground can produce more than enough for the living. People suffer here in Nigeria because nearly the whole of the products on our labour is stolen from us by those who forcefully claimed they are in charge. Most of our problem is summed up in a single word “the political ruler” they are the only creature that consume without producing. They only set people to work, forces them to work and seizes their produce, all the people have in return of these is bare “ration and a stall”.

When we as a country focus more on accelerated development of our land, we will spend less time in future on amnesty as is being presently done as if the people granted amnesty are political prisoners. By definition, amnesty is an act of pardon by a legislative authority which effaces not merely a punishment inflicted but the cause of it as well so that no fresh proceedings can be instituted. What the Niger Delta needs in addition to the current ceasefire and disarmament is the whole-scale development of the area.
A system that permits the unjust killings of our people, only to turn around later to compensate the families of those killed, places no value on human life.

The tyrant political rulers do not allow the miserable lives of the people to reach their natural span; they killed people through bad roads, poor health and medical services, lack of security, poverty, lack of quality education, corruption and what have you. Those who served the nation with all their strength and power and cannot work again or produce are sent to the grave when they are struggling to get their entitlement, gratuity, and pension.

I came up with a write up early this year, it sound prophetic, and little did I know that my aspiration and dream will be fulfill so soon. Read part of the lines……..

The panacea to the tyranny of the political ruler is “Rebellion” or Revolution, how do I mean, the revolution that we need is the one that will make us appreciate the magnitude of our problems and the urgent need for solutions. It is such a revolution of mind that changed Singapore from poor filthy country into a global business hub. Change in our way of life, we should stop accepting anything they throw at us, we must make them accountable, tell them they are our servants, they must listen to us and do what we want and not what they want, we must let them know we have what it take to change any government that is not producing and we must be proactive at it. I don’t know when it will come but very sure sooner or later, it will come and justice will be done. We need to teach our children in school and pass the message of Revolutionary change to them, so that when we are old they can carry on the struggle until victory is won. I want all Nigerians to be firm and resolute and not be discouraged by the wiles of the tyrant men in power.

In order to avert this embarrassing situation - this inglorious march into the precipice of national decline and disintegration - Nigerians from all walks of life must rise with courage and determination to sack our purposeless and clueless undertakers from the seat of power. IT IS TIME TO TAKE OVER.
The assignment is daunting but it is doable. In spite of the recklessness and discouraging tactics of political jobbers, it is time to rise up and build.

KADUNA STATE ON MY MIND: MY REFLECTIONS......... By Dotun George

You don't know and neither did you have an idea of the security situation of Kaduna state. You don't even know how volatile the state has become in the name of religion and religious activities, you stay, and live in the south but you don't have idea of how fearful some people who are not fundamentalist and not radical with their religion is up there in the north are.

You wrote long article telling us the disadvantages of the religion regulation bill but you have not told us or write about the advantages the state like Kaduna tends to get if such bill is passed into law.

I would rather have a sane, regulated, orderly and serene state devoid of killings, fighting, disorder and violence prone, than having absolutely free state, where people live in the fear of known and unknown, where known and unknown men rain terror on them and wasted innocent lives in the name of religion and service to god.

You arrogantly arrogated to yourself the position of God, who can kill and make alive, you have signed his obituary while is still alive and still govern of your state. I saw one of them rascally shouting and sweating that he gave  ultimatum to the governor to reverse and withdraw the bill.

You argued about freedom of speech, expression and association as if there is anything called absolute freedom in the law you are quoting and making reference to.
Can we for once drop this sensationalism, razzmatazz, mixed emotions, reactionary attitudes and talking before thinking.

We can do a thorough appraisal and examine things well and accurately before we kill it. Why frequently visiting the past and allow fear of the known and unknown to dominate our lives and our thought process?

So many thoughts on my mind and I cannot express all at once because, its like I am living in a different clime and planet.